


Home

by Miss_M



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology, The Iliad - Homer, The Odyssey - Homer
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Deus Ex Machina, Enemies to Lovers, M/M, Mention of harm to children, Rare Pairings, Sexual Content, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-12 09:24:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12956238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_M/pseuds/Miss_M
Summary: “Troy will fall, and when it does, you must make certain that Hector is unharmed.”“Must I? Why?”“Because without him, you will never see home again, Odysseus.”





	Home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lferion](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lferion/gifts).



> Hope you like it!
> 
> I own nothing.

The Achaeans cast their lots, and the gods chose the man who would face Hector – the firstborn son of King Priam, Ilium’s greatest warrior – in single combat.

“Oh by Hades,” Odysseus muttered as his name rippled down the ranks of assembled men, faces craned around to look at him.

Ajax the Great clapped him on the shoulder so forcefully that Odysseus’ knees nearly buckled. “Fortune favors you,” Ajax boomed, pretending he was not sorely disappointed not to have been chosen. 

“The gods love me, no doubt,” Odysseus replied. Ajax laughed, deaf to his tone and blind to the look on his face. 

Odysseus would not balk before the challenge, but he fully expected to be dead before sundown. He was no match for Hector, whom he had seen fight as many as four other men and emerge victorious, covered in their blood and the dust they had kicked up yet unharmed.

A soft voice spoke in Odysseus’ ear. “Do not call upon the lord of the dead, son of Laertes. He will not have you this day, unless you persist in invoking his name.”

Odysseus glanced behind him, just past his left shoulder. Grey-eyed Athena stood by his side, invisible to the men still attempting to jostle for Odysseus’s attention, wish him good luck, and offer him advice. 

“A wise man knows his limitations, lady,” Odysseus told the goddess. “I cannot hold out against the prince of Troy till sundown, nor am I likely to strike him a killing blow.”

“You will not kill him, and he will not kill you,” Athena replied. “I will fight by your side and protect you.”

Odysseus knew better than to question a goddess’ promise, fickle as those could be. Athena hid her form from his eyes, but he felt her near him all through that long day, lending him strength, protecting him from Hector’s killer blows. He knew her presence as clearly as he could smell the other man’s sweat, hear his labored breaths inside his helmet, feel the bone-jarring strength in his arm as their swords crashed together again and again. _Truly_ , Odysseus thought, and not for the first time during the long years of this war, _he is the best of us all, Achaean or Trojan. He may even be better than Achilles._

When the sun touched the earth in the west, and their shadows lay on the ground as long as roads running in parallel, Hector stepped back, raised his sword to signal an end to their duel, and spoke: “You have fought well, king of Ithaca.” 

Odysseus felt tired down to his very toes, his belly rumbled, and his throat was parched, yet he smiled: “I was just thinking the same of you, prince of Troy.”

He could not see Hector’s face inside the helmet, but he felt Hector’s eyes on him, measuring him. Hector could not have been delighted when he heard who would face him, for there would not be much glory in slaying a man better known for his wit than his martial prowess. Odysseus could feel himself rising in Hector’s esteem. 

“Perhaps we will face each other across the field of battle again,” Hector said. 

Odysseus nodded. “If the gods will it.” He felt Athena’s divine presence leave him then, unamused by his everlasting jests or knowing herself no longer needed, now that the day and the duel were at an end. 

Odysseus untied the red sash he wore around his waist, woven and embroidered by his wife before he’d sailed away to war. For nine years and more he had kept it and worn it in battle always, yet felt only a small pang in offering it to Hector, one warrior to another. 

Hector accepted it with a reverent bow, knowing that a man of Odysseus’ stature would not offer him a gift less than truly precious. Hector offered his sword, golden pommel first, to Odysseus in exchange. 

Odysseus hefted the sword in his hand, examined its weight, its perfect balance, its keen blade. He saluted Hector with it and took two steps back, two steps closer to the ships and the Achaean tents, not quite ready to turn his back on his enemy, despite Hector’s honorable reputation. 

“May the gods keep you,” Odysseus said.

Hector did not reply at once, as though weighing Odysseus’ words for hidden mockery. 

“And you,” he said at last, then turned his back on Odysseus and walked back toward the high walls and strong gates of Ilium. 

***

The gods were changeable and cruel, their hand in all events ever-present yet deceitful. Even so, Odysseus thought he could discern their influence clearly enough in the weeks which followed his duel with Hector, though he could not always discern the gods’ purpose. 

When old Nestor counseled Patroclus to don Achilles’ armor and take his friend’s place in battle, while Achilles’ wounded pride continued to rage like a forest fire, Odysseus thought that no god needed to interfere, for human folly would do just as well.

When Patroclus led the Myrmidons into battle and fell to Hector’s sword, Odysseus thought he could hear the whole world holding its breath, as fate cast lots for what would become of them all. He saw Patroclus fall from across the battlefield, saw Hector’s sword red with the lad’s blood, saw his own red sash tied around Hector’s waist. The sight made Odysseus’ stomach turn over, a feeling surging within him, less like fear than like too much wine, a kind of divine madness.

And when Achilles spurned Odysseus’ advice and went forth without stopping to think, raging at the head of his tired, hungry army – when Achilles sent twelve men to be slaughtered at Patroclus’ grave like cattle – when he choked the river Scamander with corpses and spurned every warning that earth and water and the gods sent him to desist – then Odysseus felt no wonder, no surprise, no grief to see the mighty Achilles fall, brought low by his own hubris as much as the prince of Troy’s sword skewering him through the chest. 

“Look, look!” Athena urged in Odysseus’ ear, and he was looking. 

He saw Achilles attempt to grasp his enemy’s arm, for comfort as he died or in a last paroxysm of anger. 

He saw Hector kneel by Achilles’ side and draw his sword slowly, almost gently from Achilles’ chest. Saw the blood drip, red as poppies and steaming with life, on the ground. 

Even over the clash of swords and the uproar as news of Achilles’ death spread, Odysseus heard Hector say to Achilles, softly yet with no trace of remorse: “I did not mean to kill him, and I am sorry for it. But you... I cannot regret the death of the man who would doom my city to perish. May the gods give you peace and glory in the Elysian Fields, son of Peleus.” 

Achilles attempted to speak, but his throat filled with blood, and he died gargling for breath. A man, in the end. 

“I thought he was invulnerable,” Odysseus said. 

Athena touched his arm, gentle as a wife. “No man is invulnerable to fate, and no city either. Troy will fall, Achilles or no Achilles, and when it does, you must make certain that Hector is unharmed.”

“Must I? Why?”

“Because without him, you will never see home again, Odysseus.” 

Odysseus’ breath escaped his body, so that for a moment he believed he too had been stabbed while witnessing the death of Achilles. He had been told that, if he joined the siege of Troy, he would be a long time coming back to Ithaca. No oracle had said anything about needing his enemy by his side as well. 

He turned, his eyes searched the battlefield, seeking for fair Athena, but she was gone.

Later still, after the funeral games had ended, after Ajax the Great fell to his own madness, after Odysseus had sacrificed a dozen cows and even a part of Achilles’ fabulous armor, trying in vain to summon Athena back and question her further, Agamemnon sought him out in his tent. 

The king of Mycenae sat hunched by Odysseus’ brazier, as sullen as a bear and more than half in his cups after Achilles’ funeral feast.

“I loathed his pride, but he was the best of us,” Agamemnon said, as though speaking to the brazier or to Achilles’ lingering spirit even more than to Odysseus. “Now he is dead, we should leave before the Trojans push us into the sea.” 

Odysseus considered mentioning Athena’s promise of Troy’s fall, decided that Agamemnon would likely scoff at divine promises, after they had all been promised that Achilles was the key to the endeavor years before. 

“A retreat need not be a defeat,” Odysseus said tactfully. 

As he had anticipated Agamemnon would, the king of Mycenae snorted angrily, chafing at Odysseus’ attempt to humor him. “After ten years? It tastes just as bitter,” Agamemnon snarled. 

Odysseus refilled his and Agamemnon’s cups with watered wine, allowed a dozen heartbeats to elapse before he spoke again: “I may have an idea. It came to me in a dream, after watching the chariot races…”

***

An hour before dawn, sleep continued to elude Odysseus. 

He could still smell the soot and smoke from the charred remains of mighty Ilium across the plain. He listened as the nightingale retired for the night, and watched through the open flap of his tent as rose-fingered Eos touched the eastern sky. The Achaean camp was quiet with most of the ships gone, having sailed back to their cities and islands, scattered like leaves before the wind. 

Odysseus lingered on, he scarcely knew why. For ten years, he had ached to return home, yet now, his task complete, his glory multiplied in tales told around hearths in Mycenae and Pylos and Sparta, he felt reluctant to set sail at last. He knew his journey would be long and arduous, for prophecies were bastards: the bad ones always came true.

And then there was the matter of his captive, without whom he would never see home again. 

Odysseus rolled over on his bed, turned his back on the dawning day, and was swallowed up by memories of night and blood. 

He had seen Neoptolemus, son of Achilles, dash the fragile skull of Hector’s young son against the flagstones as though flinging aside an empty fruit rind. Odysseus gritted his teeth and would not think of his own son, scarcely older than that babe when he had left Ithaca. He would not think of his own wife, as memories assailed him of the pitiful screams of Hector’s wife, her hands skidding on the bloody flagstones as she tried to take her son’s body in her arms. 

Odysseus had gone outside then and ordered his men, the ones guarding Hector himself – hogtied on the ground, with a dirty rag stuffed into his mouth – to carry the prince of Troy back to the ships. Hector’s eyes were deep wells of night as he stared at Odysseus while being lifted and carried out of his city like a parcel or a sacrificial ram. 

Odysseus rolled back toward the brightening day and rose from his bed. Before he could shout for an attendant to bring him water and food, a rustle inside the tent stopped him. At first he wondered if he was hearing a dog come in looking for scraps or a man sneaking about some foul purpose. Then he heard an unmistakable sound: the snick of a blade being withdrawn from a scabbard. 

His armor and weapons were on the other side of the tent – all he had to hand were the clothes he’d thrown off before he’d lain down to sleep. Lying on top of the pile of garments was the red sash Odysseus had retrieved from a chest in Hector’s chamber, after Neoptolemus had dragged the weeping Andromache to the slave-mustering point by the gate which Odysseus’ men had broken open to let the Achaean army into Troy. 

Odysseus grabbed the sash without thinking, even as he saw the shadow of a man pass between him and the dawn when the intruder exited his tent. Odysseus would have known him anywhere: the broad shoulders, the narrow waist, the proud head, now bowed, as the prince of the fallen city hurried through the slumbering camp, away from the tents and the ships, dressed in tunic and sandals like a slave, a naked blade clutched in his fist. 

Odysseus hurried after him, silent on bare feet and naked, as he had lain sleepless, with only the red sash for a weapon. 

He did not have time to wonder at his own failure to sound the alarm, to rouse some of his men to come with him. Athena had not shown herself to him since the day Achilles had died, yet Odysseus understood well enough that his destiny was now bound closely with Hector’s. Odysseus could only navigate those treacherous currents alone. 

When he caught sight of Hector among the sand dunes, kneeling and bending over the upturned blade of his own sword, its tip pressed against his bellybutton, Odysseus cast off his musings and, swallowing a curse, ran faster, quiet as a cat. He came up on Hector from behind, threw the red sash back while holding it by its ends with both hands, and flung it around Hector’s neck, like he was bringing down a steer for the slaughter. 

Hector made a strangled noise of more surprise than pain and tried to turn the sword around so he might grasp it by its hilt, but succeeded only in cutting his palm on the naked blade. Odysseus wasted no time as he wrestled Hector, larger and stronger than himself, to the ground, forced him face first into the sand, and knelt on his back, wrapping the ends of the sash around his fists and pulling it tight, until Hector stopped struggling and lay still. Hector’s eyes were open and slewed sideways, still conscious, trying to see his attacker behind and above him. 

“This is unmanly of you,” Odysseus said. He was panting with effort, sweating, and his cock was half hard. “If I let you out of the noose, do I have your word of honor you will give me back my sword, for you did gift it to me, and cease this folly? Or are you a thief as well as a weakling?”

Hector groaned, and his head inclined as though he were attempting to bury it deeper in the sand. Odysseus loosened the sash and stood up, swiftly grabbing the sword as Hector drew a deep breath, rolled over, and got up into a half crouch. 

Odysseus let the sword, which he’d pointed at Hector as a precaution, hang loose in his fist, when he saw how Hector’s head and shoulders remained bowed, his hands hung limp, and his face was a mask of despair when he looked up at Odysseus. 

It took Hector two tries to force words from his bruised throat. “You call me a thief and a coward, yet you lack even the honor to grant me a swift death. You’ve taken my city, my wife and son and aged parents from me. Take my life, as is your right, and be done.” His eyes flicked down Odysseus’ body, his mouth twisted in something halfway between a sour smile and a snarl. “Or are you the only victor among the Achaeans lacking for bed slaves and catamites, oh mighty Odysseus?”

Odysseus rotated his wrist, gathering the red sash in loops around his fist. He hefted the sword in his other hand playfully, pretending his cock was not still half hard and Hector was not at eye level with it where he knelt. The thought had not occurred to him before, but he was only a man, and it was morning. 

“If I wanted to dishonor you in that way, I could have done so a dozen times by now without going to the trouble of wrestling with you among the dunes before so much as breaking fast, like a pair of barbarians. Do not think you can provoke me to anger by impugning my manhood, prince of Troy.”

Hector was on his feet, his hands curled into fists, so fast that Odysseus’ breath stuttered. 

“Do not call me that!”

Odysseus leveled the point of the sword at Hector’s throat and schooled his features into an expression which brooked no argument. “You are still a prince, even if your city is no more, and I would treat you with courtesy while you are my captive. If I keep you alive, it is because it pleases me to do so. If you persist in attempting to kill yourself, I will have you hogtied and guarded again.”

“But why?” Hector cried, uncurling his fists, so Odysseus would see he no longer planned to attack even if his words continued defiant. “No other Achaean took grown men as slaves, and you know there will be no ransom for me. What possible need have you of me?”

 _I need you alive and with me in order to see Ithaca again._ Odysseus suppressed the anger at the gods’ capriciousness, which surged within him at the thought.

“Your word of honor,” he said, ignoring Hector’s expression and his pleas. No man alive ever merited an explanation of his fate. “Swear that you will respect the breath the gods saw fit to let you draw, so that I may respect you as your deeds and lineage deserve.” 

For a moment, Hector’s mien changed. He seemed ready to run straight toward the sword in Odysseus hand and impale himself upon it. Then the darkness fell away from him, and his shoulders slumped with exhaustion rather than despair. 

“I swear it,” Hector whispered to the sand. Blood dripped from the cut on his hand like a libation. “If you want a cursed man’s oath, I swear it, and much joy may it bring you.”

Odysseus grinned – defiance and anger would keep Hector alive as well as anything, but he really had not relished the thought of having to watch over the man lest he did himself or Odysseus harm. Odysseus lowered the sword and gestured with it for Hector to precede him on the path through the dunes, back to the camp. 

“We are all cursed, did you not know that?” Odysseus quipped, thinking of the long journey that lay ahead of them. Whatever direness Hector wished would befall him, Odysseus was certain the gods could outdo tenfold. “The curse is called life, and none escape it alive.” 

***

True to the gods’ word and every manner of cruelty that Odysseus knew about the world, an ill wind blew his fleet away from the shores of once-mighty Troy. 

When they first made landfall, in Ismaros, and fell to sacking the city, Odysseus left Hector on his flagship, unchained yet watched closely by the skeleton crew. By the time the islanders mustered their considerable force and harried Odysseus’ men back to their ships, Odysseus found the man he’d left in charge taking orders from Hector to lower more rowboats in aid of the men escaping the beach and prepare to raise anchors as soon as everyone was on board. 

“One does not simply remove the prince from the man, I see,” Odysseus said, after Ismaros dropped below the horizon, and he had tallied up the men lost in the battle with the islanders. 

He was watching the sun color the sea purple as it inclined toward night. Hector stood beside him and offered no reply, save a sideways look at Odysseus’ amused profile. 

In the land of the Lotus-Eaters, Odysseus included Hector in the landing party, then watched in mounting annoyance as Hector accepted the intoxicating fruit alongside Odysseus’ own men, eating more of it than Odysseus would have believed any one man could. He’d expected nothing better from his men, but the force of his displeasure at Hector’s foolish behavior took him by surprise. 

After he had whipped and scourged them all back to the ships, he sat Hector down in his own cabin and put a trencher of bread and meat and a flagon of watered wine between them. 

“Eat,” he ordered Hector. “Real food will make the lotus’ effects dissipate faster.”

Hector raised his eyes to Odysseus: his gaze, glazed by the fruit’s lingering effects, was filled still with enough presence of mind to show anger, disgust, and a grim determination. 

“I swore to you that I would no longer seek death,” Hector said, fierce even though the lotus made his words slur together. “I never swore I would not dream this empty skin of a life away.”

Odysseus barely restrained himself from beating some sense into the man. He might have done it anyway, but a new thought cut through his fog of anger. 

“You ate more than anyone else. You were hungrier than any of us when they offered you their damned lotus.”

He glared at Hector, who avoided his gaze. By the light of a faint lamp, Odysseus could see that Hector was blushing. 

He grabbed a loaf of bread, tore it in half, and pressed one half to Hector’s flushed chest. Kept it pressed there like a blade, his other hand gripping the most vulnerable part of Hector’s shoulder, feeling Hector’s fevered pulse where Odysseus’ thumb pressed into the triangle of skin between shoulder and throat.

“Eat, Hades take you!” Odysseus snarled. “If you don’t think I will have you force-fed, should you continue trying to starve yourself, you presume too much on my good nature.” 

Slowly Hector raised his hand and covered Odysseus’, so that they both gripped the hunk of bread to Hector’s chest. 

“Unhand me,” Hector said quietly, and after a long moment when his whole body thrummed with blood-lust, Odysseus did. 

He sat down opposite Hector and watched him toy with the bread in his hands, eating none of it. 

“Do you know what they said about you in the Achaean camp?” Odysseus asked, feeling as tired as though he had fought the entire Trojan army single-handed. 

Hector looked up, frowning. 

“They said the reason you were the best of them was not because you were Priam’s firstborn, or because you were loved of Apollo, but because you did not wish to fight. You did not wish for the war or approve of your brother’s foolish choice of wife, but you fought anyway, because that is what it means to have a home and a family and a hearth.” Odysseus closed his eyes, willing his heart to cease pounding so hard. “My entire fleet is lost and tossed by every breeze, but I think you are the most lost of us all.” 

He opened his eyes and held his breath at the expression on Hector’s face. He felt turned to stone, as though struck by Medusa’s gaze from Hector’s burning eyes. 

“If I ever see my Ithaca again, you will have a place by my hearth, I will entrust my son to your care and counsel above all others, and should you wish to marry you will have your choice of my womenfolk. By all the gods, I swear it.”

Slowly, as slowly as the hunter Orion moving across the night sky, heralding spring, Hector shook his head from side to side. “I had a wife and a son. I will not have another. But I thank you, Odysseus.”

Odysseus caught his breath: Hector had not spoken his name since the fall of Ilium. He nodded, accepting what Hector gave and asking for no more. With a trembling hand, Odysseus poured wine into two cups, while Hector tore off a small piece of bread and put it in his mouth.

***

“See him,” the goddess said. 

Not Athena – the fragrant smell in Odysseus’ nostrils, the soft breeze wafting over him, the coo of doves in his ears, all heralded the presence of Aphrodite. The goddess stood before him, covetable and unreachable as a marble statue, and smiled at Odysseus a smile like sweet poison, while all around them men descended to all fours, their skin sprouted bristles, and they cried out in dismay yet the sound that issued from their elongated snouts was wild grunting. 

Odysseus started violently as his gaze followed Aphrodite’s pointing hand. His hand scrabbled foolishly for the sword hanging from his belt, but he could not have harmed a goddess, and anyway the sword was gone. The gold-pommeled sword which Hector had given him the day they had dueled, which Odysseus had reclaimed that morning in the dunes – when Circe had flicked all the men’s shoulders with a willow switch, one by one, and commanded them to show their true selves, Hector had snatched the sword from Odysseus’ scabbard and leapt to grab the sorceress by the throat and press the sword to her breast. 

Odysseus had trembled in the Cyclops’ cave, when their host had grabbed up the man sitting right next to Hector and borne him off, screaming, to be roasted for the giant’s dinner. 

Odysseus had thrilled when Hector volunteered to be the one to drive the sharpened stake into the drunken Cyclops’ eye – thrilled to see Hector’s nod of approval when he’d explained his plan and shown the surviving men how to grab the thick, matted fleece of the Cyclops’ sheep – thrilled to catch sight of Hector’s grin at the blinded monster’s shrieks of rage, _It was No One! No One did this to me._

Odysseus had not hesitated to shout for a sword to be placed in Hector’s hand while fighting a rearguard battle against the wild Laestrygonians. 

After he had blinded the son of Poseidon and his men had squandered the gift of Aeolus, after all the insults he had racked up against Apollo and all the other gods who had supported Troy, Odysseus supposed that he had the presence of a son of Troy by his side, even more than Athena’s dubious protection, to thank for the fact that he had not yet been sunk by the waves or blown over the edge of the world in a gale. And now Aphrodite, who had loved Ilium better than any of her many lovers, stood before Odysseus in Circe’s hall, pigs milling around their legs, and pointed at Hector menacing the sorceress with the sword which had belonged to both men at one time or another, and said to Odysseus: “See him. Really _see him_.”

In the blink of an eye, she vanished, still smiling her poisonous smile, and the hall filled again with the grunting of pigs and the stench of terrified porcine bodies. Circe was on her knees, clutching at Hector’s forearm with both hands, her haughty face deformed with fear. 

“Anything,” she stammered. “Anything you want.”

“Change them back,” Hector thundered. “Now. Just as they were.” 

When the hall was filled again by men, men trembling with fear and anger, nauseous with the quick transformations from two legs to four and back to two again, Odysseus snapped out of the fog in which Aphrodite had enveloped him and set about making peace between the furious Hector, the still-dangerous sorceress, and the men. 

So well did he perform this task, flattering the sorceress, cajoling and joking with the men, and asking Hector in a wry whisper to give him back his sword, that their stay on Circe’s island grew long as a winter night and considerably more comfortable. The men ate and drank and sported with Circe’s laughing maids, and Odysseus himself bedded the sorceress when he felt like it, his flesh sated afterward but his mind still restless, as though tossed upon a stormy sea.

One day, he turned his back on Circe’s bedchamber and went walking along the shore of her island, watching the horizon and wondering what kind of sacrifice might secure him a calm sea and a favorable wind, when he heard twigs snapping behind him and called out, without looking back: “Spying is not your strong suit, prince of Troy.”

Snapping more twigs and rustling leaves and kicking pebbles for good measure, Hector fell into step beside Odysseus, looking displeased about something. He had kept his distance from Circe and her women since that first day, though Odysseus knew that Circe would have relished bedding the man who had defeated her and her magic, even more than she enjoyed riding Odysseus till she was flushed and sweaty all over.

“I dislike this place,” Hector said quietly, glancing around as though suspecting the butterflies in the grass and the birds in the trees of spying on them for Circe, which Odysseus could well believe the butterflies and the birds did. “I do not think we should linger here much longer.”

Odysseus smiled, and raised his hand, and cupped the back of Hector’s neck before he could check himself. _See him_ , the goddess had said, and he did. He saw Hector start, his eyes stare as though sun-blind, his lips part in surprise. He was younger, taller, and broader than Odysseus, yet made no move to push him away when Odysseus kissed his left cheek, then his right, then pressed his mouth to Hector’s and slipped his tongue inside quickly before withdrawing. 

“I couldn’t agree more,” Odysseus said, taking entirely too much pleasure in Hector’s startlement. “I would have us both away from here, and soon. I feel like we are being watched by a thousand eyes, as though our host were Argos himself.” He did not have to act out or summon the warmth that crept into his tone – it came on its own. “I would have us alone.”

Hector still stared at him open-mouthed, still made no move of either violence or defense. “Are you mad or drunk?” he asked. “Has Dionysus himself turned your head?”

Odysseus laughed what felt like his first genuine laugh in over ten years. “I was mad when I left Ithaca, not now. I suspect I _am_ being manipulated grossly by the fair Aphrodite, who loved your city well and may be exacting some petty revenge on me. But in truth, Hector,” and yes, Hector started at that, their respective names still did not come to them easily when they spoke to each other, “in truth, I would rather be maddened by thoughts of you than I would be sane enough to despair of our current situation. And I will continue to respect your honor, however enraptured I may be. So there: pick that up or leave it, as you will.”

Hector shut his mouth at last, tempting Odysseus only a hair less than before, and glanced heavenward in a way Odysseus was beginning to recognize, and pointed further down the beach, away from the trees and the fields and Circe’s hall. 

“Let us plan how we will get away from here first, away from prying eyes and ears,” Hector said. “Then we can worry about curing this mania of yours.”

***

“They do say the best cure for madness is a surfeit of whatever is driving a man mad,” Odysseus rasped out. “Though this is nowhere near too much.”

Hector blew out a loud breath, like a horse, and tried again to press Odysseus back on the red dirt, his other hand jostling with Odysseus’ below their waists. Hector straddled and kept Odysseus pinned down, but Odysseus used his position to lift his knee and press his thigh between Hector’s, grinning at the man’s grimace of both pleasure and frustration. Odysseus rubbed, deliberately fast, even as he tried to press his cock to Hector’s and take them both in his hand, and Hector kept trying to get his hand in the way and do it himself. 

He had let Hector come to him, as he had suspected Hector would, anticipated it with the feverish clarity that only Aphrodite could bestow. Hector had kept his distance on Circe’s island and on the ship, but Odysseus had felt Hector’s eyes on him many a time. He’d let Hector look, and only sometimes turned with a grin and a look of his own, looking his fill from the crown of Hector’s head to his sunburned toes. When their eyes met, Hector would shake his head and turn away, more like he could not believe Odysseus’ brazenness than like he was shamed by Odysseus’ attention. 

Hector had given no sign of surprise, nor even glanced at the heavens, when Odysseus had announced his intention to hear the Sirens singing – merely insisted that he too would keep his ears unsealed and be tied to mast, back to back with Odysseus. 

“Making sure you don’t forget your oath and fling yourself into the ocean, when you hear the Sirens’ song?” Odysseus asked. 

“Making sure someone can hear you and call you names to sober you up, if _you_ become even madder than you already are and decide to throw _yourself_ overboard.”

In the end, Odysseus had screamed to be untied, called his unheeding men a pack of curs and Hector a son of a pig whore, and laughed hysterically, while the Sirens’ voices filled the world around them and the only human presence he recognized as real was Hector’s voice telling him to stop shouting so loudly or he’d drive Hector deaf, for Hades’ sake, and Hector’s hand gripping his, even after the tightly-lashed rope had cut off all other sensation in Odysseus’ limbs.

Poseidon may have supported the Trojans in the war, but he spared none of his preciously rare pity for the fleet bearing Troy’s last son, tossing them like eggshells past the Sirens’ jagged rocks, between hungry Scylla and the titanic pull of Charybdis’ whirlpool, wrecking all but Odysseus’ flagship. 

It had run aground yet not breached, its hull buried three feet deep in yet another island’s sandy beach. The storm passed over them at last, but wine-dark clouds remained massed like an army on the horizon, lightning flashing like the noonday sun on spear tips. 

“I shall pray to Zeus and Poseidon for mercy and safe passage,” Odysseus announced before retreating into an olive grove out of sight of the beach, where the cows sacred to Helios had come down from the hills to stare placidly at the men and their sole remaining ship. 

_Zeus and Poseidon can go and fuc…_ Odysseus thought, exulting, when he saw that Hector had followed him, as he had more than half hoped Hector might. 

They grappled on the red earth of the olive grove, Hector half pinning Odysseus down and half embracing him, and Odysseus rubbing his leg mercilessly between Hector’s strong thighs. At last, without exchanging any words about it, they grabbed their cocks together, Hector’s hand wrapped around the bases while Odysseus rubbed his calloused thumb over both damp heads.

“All these olive trees, but I’d trade the whole ship and the men on it for a flask of olive oil,” Odysseus panted. 

Hector groaned in his ear and trapped further blasphemy in his mouth by kissing him, his beard and Odysseus’ intertwining like fingers. 

“Do you think,” Hector demanded when their lips parted, “do you think you are so cunning that you’d get me to play eromenos to you?”

Odysseus had to close his eyes then, the sight of Hector’s face, equal parts defiant and avid, too much, in addition to Hector’s weight on him, the smell and feel of him, his girth pressed up and rubbing against Odysseus’ own. Odysseus thrust up into both their hands and imagined Hector on his hands and knees under the olive trees, his long, muscular back arched and his head thrown back, while Odysseus gripped his hips and slipped, oil-slick, inside him.

“I think,” Odysseus panted, flicking the head of Hector’s cock with his thumb, “I think you’d trade your whole city for some oil right now, let alone the ship and the men left to us, and not just so you could spread for me, oh prince.” His reward came at once, as Hector’s breath caught, and he shuddered and spilled on Odysseus’ stomach, his head thrown back just as it was in Odysseus’ fantasy. 

Odysseus lay on the red earth, churned up and moistened with sweat as after a battle, with Hector sprawled out beside him, when the breeze changed direction, coming from the beach instead of the hills, and the thick scents of pine trees and olives and their own bodies were replaced by the smell of meat roasting over a fire.

***

Odysseus did not rage against the gods’ capriciousness after the day in the olive grove. He knew why Helios had demanded retribution for the injury which Odysseus’ fools of a crew had given him by slaughtering the sun god’s cattle for a feast – why Zeus had flung a thunderbolt at his sole remaining ship – why Poseidon had gathered up his remaining men and dragged them down to Hades. Odysseus understood this, and he accepted it. 

He still refused to give thanks for Hector’s survival alongside his own. Despite his occasional cruelty in taunting the prince of Troy about his lost city and intimacy with his blood-foe, flaying himself with his sharp words as much as he flayed Hector, Odysseus refused to believe that Hector remaining alive was the gods showing mercy to a man who had lost everything but the breath in his body. Being shipwrecked and stranded on an island with only Odysseus for company and no hope of rescue hardly seemed merciful. 

At least the island had a warm, dry cave in which they could sleep. At least it had cypresses to give shade, and wild oats growing in patches here and there, and vines which bore heavy, succulent grapes, and a spring of fresh, cold water. Still Odysseus refused to squeeze a single grape between his fingers and let its juice drip on the ground as an offering to the gods, even if Hector sometimes sat by the springhead alone and prayed. To whom he prayed and for what, Odysseus did not ask, told himself repeatedly he did not care. 

One night, not long after they had been washed up on the island, when Hector covered their little fire with stones and said they should sleep before another long day of fishing from the rocks on the island’s north end, Odysseus came to stand between Hector and the entrance to the cave. They’d been sleeping in it, side by side, without touching. Odysseus had half convinced himself that Hector’s skin would be clammy still with the stormy sea, if he did reach out some pale dawn and touch a shoulder, a thigh. 

He put his hands on Hector’s shoulders, on the sides of his neck, in his beard. Odysseus’ hands shook at the feel of warm skin and salt-stiffened hair under his palms. He pressed his mouth to Hector’s lips, then to Hector’s throat, the hard muscle of his chest, and his nipples like dark berries. 

“Odysseus,” Hector started to say, swallowed his breath when Odysseus dropped to his knees and buried his nose and mouth in the hair curling at the base of Hector’s cock. 

Odysseus nuzzled him, and licked the length of him, and took him in his mouth, sucking in his cheeks and bobbing his head, desperate to feel more of Hector’s hardening length, warm and salty like the sun on a blue sea. He had not played this game since he was a boy, but Hector first caressed then gripped his hair and said Odysseus’ name again while Odysseus labored over him. 

Odysseus thought, through a fever he had not felt since the day in the olive grove, that he was a blasphemer and a scoundrel, and he deserved to never see his home again, but at least he could do this. He could salve the wounds left by all of Hector’s losses with his mouth and his tongue and his hands on Hector’s thighs, he could give Hector this and take away everything else, if only for a moment.

The moment came and passed, always too fast, and Odysseus remained kneeling while Hector drew deep, shuddering breaths and touched Odysseus’ shoulders with his fingers.

“Come on,” Hector said.

“Where?” Odysseus asked, thinking that the world had shrunk to two places only, this island and Hades. 

“To the cave, where else? We didn’t make a bed of cypress branches in order to kneel in the dirt all night.” 

Odysseus looked up, his fever clearing and leaving him light-headed as with hunger, at least until he saw the amused curl of Hector’s lip, until he followed Hector’s gaze back down to his own lap and saw his cock, hard and upright like a herald’s staff.

“You said it yourself,” Hector said as he grasped the hand Odysseus gave him and pulled him up. “Life is a curse no one escapes.”

Odysseus laughed all the way to the cave, stumbling in the dark with Hector’s arm around his waist, Hector warm as a blazing bonfire all along his side. 

He felt consumed by that blaze as Hector laid him down on their bed of green branches and then lay down between Odysseus’ legs, as the wet warmth of Hector’s mouth encircled him, and Hector’s beard scratched him, and Hector’s breath snuffled in his thick cockhair. Odysseus wished to be forbearing, but Hector pulled off him to lick across his belly and over his balls and kissed his cock like Odysseus was something holy, something dedicated to the gods in all their glory. Then Odysseus grabbed Hector’s hair, like he was clinging to one of the Cyclops’ ewes, and pushed frantically into Hector’s mouth. The gods and his wife forgive him, Odysseus wished for nothing more when he spilled in Hector’s mouth, roaring wordlessly at the cave ceiling, his fingers in Hector’s hair, Hector gripping the hard muscle of his thigh and buttock like he was still clinging for dear life to a part of their ruined ship among the tossing waves. 

The next morning dawned blue and clear and wind-stirred, taunting Odysseus even through the haze of waking with Hector’s arm flung across his torso, Hector’s warm breath on his shoulder. They washed on the beach, standing side by side in the shallows, Odysseus bending to flick water at Hector and Hector shaking his head, as though Odysseus were a smooth-cheeked boy trying to join in men’s games with spear and sword, when out of the sea stepped a cow, her horns bright as the sun and her udder full to bursting, followed by a spotted calf. 

They stared at the uncanny animals, the cow lowing to be milked while he calf shook off the salt water from its hide and went gamboling along the beach. Their diet of nothing but herbs and grapes and the odd fish appeared to be a thing of the past. 

“It seems that Apollo or Poseidon loves you still,” Odysseus told Hector, not taking his eyes off the cattle from the sea. “Go get that red sash of mine to make a halter, before they change their minds and return to wherever they came from.”

Hector muttered that it had been his sash once, but he went swiftly to their cave, casting glances back over his shoulder at Odysseus and the cow eyeing each other across an empty stretch of beach, the sea lapping at their toes and hooves. 

Days and nights strung themselves together like beads. Although she had no bull, the cow kept calving, so they even had meat for part of the year. Every morning, Hector milked the cow, and Odysseus churned the butter. They went fishing, and picked grapes, and even tried pressing them to make thin, sour wine. 

They competed against each other in running, leaping, and unarmed combat. Sometimes they battled each other with words or fists – Odysseus’ cruelty and homesickness against Hector’s pain and anger. They fought the ten-year war all over again, the island seeming too small to hold them both. Eventually one of them ( _Hector_ ) would slam the other ( _Odysseus_ ) to the ground in a wrestler’s chokehold, or one of them ( _it could go either way which one_ ) would kiss the other with more teeth than tongue, and their truce would resume. 

They bathed and watched the horizon for passing ships, which never appeared. The stars wheeled from season to season overhead, while under them Odysseus talked and talked in the night until Hector pulled Odysseus’ head down to his lap, or Odysseus spilled in Hector’s mouth or between his sweat-slick thighs, and thought himself replete even as something shriveled inside his breast the more time passed. 

When seven years had elapsed, Odysseus began to build a boat. 

He gathered up cypress branches and painstakingly wove and lashed them together, and worked on a thin sapling he felled with his gold-pommeled sword, to make a mast. He did not know what he would use for a sail or a rudder, but he trusted he would think of something by the time he needed them.

“You really have run mad now,” Hector shouted at him on the fifth day in a row when milk went unchurned and fish went uncaught. “You think fortune will always favor you, that everything must turn out as you planned! Well I am not going with you. You can drown all on your own, if you are so desperate to get away from the only patch of dry land we have been given. Hades take you.”

Odysseus kept plaiting two cypress branches, like a girl’s long tresses. “I’m going just as soon as I can get this seaworthy,” he said without looking at Hector where he stood fuming. “I’ll sacrifice the youngest calf to Poseidon and the second youngest to Zeus and Helios. And I do not recall asking you to come along. I thought the gods wanted me to keep you near so you would guide me home, but clearly they were wrong or I was truly mad to listen to them. Hades take me? Hades take _you_ , and keep you.”

Hector took a step closer, raising his fists, his whole body shaking with rage, but then he stopped, his shoulders slumped, and he stomped away, muttering still about madness and stupidity. 

That night, Athena came to Odysseus in a dream. 

“Is this a good omen?” he asked, trembling with hope almost in spite of himself. “It has been so long since I have seen you or felt your presence, lady. I beg you, in the name of everything I have held sacred and blasphemed against, tell me this is a good sign.”

She smiled her philosopher’s smile. “That it is, though not of the kind you mean. Look.”

She showed him his hall on Ithaca, crowded with people. He saw many faces he recognized and many new ones. He recognized his wife, older now, standing by a young man’s side, veiled like a new bride. And on his throne, he saw another young man, one who had Penelope’s eyes and his own face, the face that had used to look back at him from still pools and polished shields when he was much, much younger. 

“Is that…?” Odysseus’ face was wet with tears. 

“Your son has done you proud,” Athena said. “Thieves and scoundrels were eating up your patrimony and harassing your womenfolk, but I went to Telemachus and helped him to victory. He cleared your hall of intruders, he took his rightful place as king, and his friend took Penelope to wife after she was done mourning you. It is all as well as it can be, so you need fear and worry for them no more.”

“But you said…” Odysseus wiped his face with his palm, reined in his voice: he knew better than to shout at a goddess. “You said that I needed Hector. You said that I would never see my home again, if he was not with me. Seven years we have been trapped here, nine years since we left Ilium’s shores. You said.”

Athena looked at him with what, Odysseus supposed, passed for pity among the gods. “And do you not see your home when you wake?” she said. “You and he have wandered far and wide, as was prophesied, and is this island not now your home? What is it that you think a home is, clever Odysseus? No one ever said it would have to be your ancestors’ hall.”

Odysseus started, speared through by the horror and the truth of it, tried to hold himself together, glanced around for one last look at his hall, his son, his wife, but the vision was gone. Then he sat on the ground and wept like a child, and when he had no more tears, Athena offered him a boon to ease his sorrow, for despite everything he had always been her favorite.

Odysseus opened his eyes to find dawn filling the cave and Hector asleep with his back to Odysseus. He grabbed Hector’s shoulder and shook him awake. Ignoring Hector’s sullen protests that the cow needed milking even if her milk would spoil, Odysseus led the way to the springhead, where a great olive tree had sprung up overnight, its branches bowed down with ripe fruit, nearly touching the burbling water. 

“I have it on good authority that it will bear fruit thrice a year,” Odysseus said while Hector gaped. “We will never lack for olives or olive oil again.” 

Hector went from staring at the tree to staring at Odysseus. 

“Olive wood would be better for shipbuilding than cypress bows,” Hector said after a pause. 

Odysseus smiled and gripped the back of Hector’s neck in his hand, and Hector did not shove him away. 

“Careful,” Odysseus said. “This tree was a gift from Pallas Athena herself. You wouldn’t want to anger her, now would you?”

Hector watched him, nostrils flared, jaw set. “What about your home? Yesterday you couldn’t wait to set sail for it.”

Odysseus shrugged and slipped his fingers up Hector’s neck, into his hair. “Yesterday I was mad. Now I remember that the only home I’ve had in years has been inside your mouth, prince of Troy.”

Hector’s cheeks above his beard turned red in that way Odysseus had come to know so well.

They did not touch more that day, or the day after, or the day after that. Hector helped Odysseus unweave the cypress branches he had worked on – they put them down in the cave as a replacement for the older branches they’d been sleeping on. They milked the cow, and churned the butter, and sacrificed some butter and fresh-picked olives and sour wine to Athena. They made an oil press out of a flat, hollowed-out stone and set to work harvesting the olives. 

On the third night after his dream, Odysseus dipped his finger in the oil and tasted it. It was bitter and thick with specks of dirt and flecks of crushed olive pits, but it tasted sweet as ambrosia on Odysseus’ tongue.

He offered the bowl of oil to Hector, then watched, amused, as Hector hesitated, torn between offering it back to Odysseus and grabbing it, as he obviously wished to do. 

“Hector,” Odysseus said softly. “You already gave me your sword once. Don’t you think you should do so again?”

Hector laughed, and shook his head, and took the oil before following Odysseus into their cave, where they’d lit a small fire close to their bed of fresh cypress. The scent of evergreens filled the air as they crushed it under their bodies, Hector’s mouth sliding wetly down Odysseus’ neck and chest while Odysseus dipped his fingers in oil and reached for Hector’s cock, wishing he could have Hector in every way at once, now they had so much oil close to hand.

Hector’s skin gleamed like bronze in the firelight, seeming taut and hard, yet feeling like nothing more nor less than warm flesh under Odysseus’ hands. Hector’s sweat dripped on him, and Odysseus’ ears filled with the gentle soughing of the waves, the liquid, meaty sound of his own body being plundered, and the sharp gasps, as of pain, from the man plundering him. Hector’s teeth clenched to bite back his pleasure as he moved, rolling over Odysseus like Uranus over Gaia, lifting Odysseus’ knees up under his armpits, until Odysseus’ thumb pressed to the hollow beneath Hector’s throat ripped a cry from Hector, half dismay and half triumph. Odysseus arched his back, his oily fingers gripping his own cock between Hector’s belly and his, fevered for release. 

Hector stayed as he was, after, on his elbows and knees and trembling all over, before he allowed Odysseus to pull him down on top of himself. Hector’s body was heavy and too warm, shining with sweat as he covered Odysseus, like to smother him, yet Odysseus recognized the feeling that came over him as they lay entwined and still quaking, Hector’s breath hot in his ear: it was peace.


End file.
